Senate Democrats, fresh off a weekend of anti-Trump rallies, again blocked the Republicans’ plan to reopen the government for an 11th time as the shutdown nears its fourth week.

Senate Republicans had hoped their colleagues across the aisle would have a change of heart after the ‘No Kings’ rallies across the country, but like many times before, Senate Democrats, led by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., largely voted to block the funding bill.

Neither side has changed its position as the shutdown has continued to drag on.

Senate Democrats want an extension to expiring Obamacare subsidies, which were enhanced when Senate Democrats controlled the upper chamber under President Joe Biden and are set to expire by the end of this year.

Schumer accused congressional Republicans of being unwilling to solve the problem, despite overtures from Senate Republicans that they’d be open to have a vote on the matter. 

‘What kind of country do we live in? What kind of party is this Republican Party that is unwilling to solve this problem, which is staring Americans in the face, frightening Americans from one end of the country to the other,’ Schumer said. ‘And yet Republicans, what are they doing about it? Nothing. They’re on vacation. It’s unacceptable and morally repugnant.’

Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., contended over the weekend at the ‘No Kings’ rally in Washington, D.C., that when Democrats were in charge, the government never shut down.

‘The government is shut down and shutdowns are painful,’ he said. ‘They hurt people. And frankly, that’s why there was not a single government shutdown when Joe Biden was president and Democrats were in charge of Congress. Because we acted like adults, we negotiated with Republicans. We found common ground. We kept the government open.’

But Senate Republicans have remained adamant that they won’t negotiate while the government is shut down. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., extended an olive branch to Senate Democrats and offered a vote on the expiring subsidies, but so far, Senate Democrats have not agreed.

Republicans are also trying to fund the government through other means. Thune tried and failed to advance the annual defense appropriations bill through a procedural hurdle last week, which Senate Democrats blocked. Republicans are also trying to finish work on a trio of funding bills passed in August, but Senate Democrats are blocking that, too.

‘Any idea that this is about Obamacare enhanced premium tax credits is going by the wayside when they continue to keep the government shut down and don’t allow us time to actually work on the issue,’ Thune said. ‘I don’t think they want a solution. I think they want a political issue.’

Another issue is that even if lawmakers were to pass the House-passed continuing resolution (CR) on Tuesday, Congress would only have one month to finish work on spending bills to fund the government. When asked if the it was time to think about the House coming back to extend the deadline, Thune said, ‘For sure.’ 

‘I mean, every day that passes, we have less time to fund the government,’ he said. 

Meanwhile, lawmakers will get the chance to pay certain federal workers and the military later in the week.

Thune said that he planned to tee up legislation from Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., and several other Senate Republicans that would pay military service members and certain ‘excepted’ federal workers who are still working despite the ongoing shutdown. That bill could be ready for a vote by Thursday at the latest. 

When asked if he worried that Senate Democrats would continue to take hostages during the shutdown fight, Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., said, ‘Hopefully not.’

‘Because at whatever point the Schumer shutdown ends is because the Democrats are finally tired of it, or they hear enough from their constituents,’ he said. ‘Hopefully enough people will tell them, ‘Hey, we don’t want that anymore. You keep government open. Do the job.’’

But for now, there’s no real end in sight for the shutdown.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, contended that neither side would break the impasse given that there’s no ‘incentive’ to do so.

‘What we’re seeing is different,’ Murkowski said. ‘You’ve got both sides that are just really hard dug in, but everybody thinks they’re winning. Nobody is winning when everybody’s losing. And that’s what’s happening right now. The American public is losing.’

: Trump administration agencies are working to expose the Biden administration’s ‘prolific and dangerous weaponization of government,’ Fox News Digital has learned.

The Interagency Weaponization Working Group (IWWG) is made up of officials from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Justice Department, the FBI, the CIA and more.

Officials told Fox News Digital that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard initiated the Interagency Weaponization Working Group, which has been meeting biweekly since April to ‘share information, coordinate, and execute.’

‘The American people made a clear choice when they elected President Trump — to stop the Biden administration’s prolific and dangerous weaponization of government agencies against the American people and the Constitution,’ Gabbard told Fox News Digital. ‘I stood up this working group to start the important work of interagency coordination under President Trump’s leadership to deliver accountability.’

She added: ‘True accountability is the first step toward lasting change.’

Officials told Fox News Digital the group was created to streamline information sharing across the government in support of the Trump executive order.

‘Joe Biden’s Department of Justice targeted President Trump and anyone close to him, prosecuted pro-life advocates, treated parents at school board meetings as domestic terrorists, and destroyed public trust in federal law enforcement,’ Attorney General Pam Bondi told Fox News Digital.

‘Under President Trump, we are working every day alongside our partners to end weaponization and restore one tier of justice for all,’ Bondi said.

Meanwhile, FBI Director Kash Patel told Fox News Digital that, ‘for years, Biden’s DOJ turned federal law enforcement into a political weapon.’ 

‘Going after President Trump, pro-life Americans, and parents at school boards while letting real criminals run wild,’ Patel told Fox News Digital. ‘Under Preisdent Trump, we’ve ripped that agenda out by the roots.’ 

Patel added: ‘We’re restoring equal justice under the law, one standard, one mission: Protect the American people.’ 

Officials involved pointed Fox News Digital to President Trump’s executive order, which says interagency coordination is needed to ‘ensure accountability for the previous administration’s weaponization of the federal government against the American people.’ 

The executive order had directed Gabbard, in consultation with the heads of other appropriate departments and agencies within the intelligence community, to ‘take all appropriate action to review the activities of the intelligence community over the last four years and identify any instances’ of the weaponization of government.

Officials told Fox News Digital that the interagency group is ‘working to undo the Biden administration’s whole-of-government approach to abuse the powers of government against the American people.’

‘The weaponization of government against Americans did not happen in one agency, one time,’ an official explained. ‘It happened repeatedly over the duration of the Biden administration.’

‘That’s why, in order to depoliticize and deweaponize the government, it is important to understand what agencies carried out, what roles, and why,’ the official continued. ‘The IWWG is essential for coordinating across agencies.’ 

But officials said the media has attempted to ‘negatively spin lawful oversight and accountability’ by claiming it is a way for the Trump administration to weaponize the government against its political opponents.

‘The irony is, accusing the Interagency Weaponization Working Group of targeting the president’s political opponents is classic projection and could not be further from the truth,’ an official said.

The official said that there is ‘no targeting of any individual person for retribution.’

‘IWWG is simply looking at available facts and evidence that may point to actions, reports, agencies, individuals, and more who illegally weaponized the government in order to carry out political attacks,’ the official said.

‘The only people who fear accountability are the ones who never expected to face it,’ the official continued. ‘Oversight is not the problem—abuse of power is.’ 

Lawyers for former FBI director James Comey asked a federal judge Monday to dismiss his criminal case on the grounds of ‘vindictive and selective’ prosecution, citing what they argued in a new filing is a record of ‘ample objective evidence’ that they argued should suffice to dismiss his case ‘with prejudice.’

Comey’s lawyers used the more than 50-page filing to tick through a lengthy timeline of the strained relationship between Trump and his former FBI director, whom Trump fired during his first term, in 2017 — less than halfway through his 10-year tenure as FBI director — as well as Trump’s public attacks and criticisms of Comey.  

They also noted that much of the damning information has come from Trump himself, or other administration officials. 

‘The indictment in this case arises from multiple glaring constitutional violations and an egregious abuse of power by the federal government,’ his lawyers said in the filing.

Trump ordered the Justice Department to prosecute Comey after taking office for a second time ‘because of personal spite and because Mr. Comey has frequently criticized the president for his conduct in office,’ they said. 

‘When no career prosecutor would carry out those orders, the president publicly forced the interim U.S. attorney to resign and directed the Attorney General to effectuate ‘justice’ against Mr. Comey,’ his lawyers said.

It was one of two extraordinary motions to dismiss the case against Comey that his lawyers filed Monday with U.S. District Judge Michael Nachmanoff, who is overseeing the case in Alexandria.

The other motion asked Judge Nachmanoff to dismiss the case against Comey due to what they argued was Trump’s ‘unlawful’ appointment of Lindsey Halligan, his former personal lawyer, as acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. 

Trump in September announced he would install Halligan as the top prosecutor for the Eastern District of Virginia, replacing interim U.S. Attorney Erik Siebert, who resigned under pressure to indict both Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.

Comey’s lawyers noted Monday that Halligan’s appointment was made just three days before Comey’s indictment.

The official ‘who purported to secure and sign the indictment was invalidly appointed to her position as interim U.S. Attorney,’ they told the judge. 

‘Because of that fundamental constitutional and statutory defect, the indictment is a nullity and must be dismissed. That dismissal must be with prejudice in order to deter the government’s willfully unlawful conduct.’

In order to establish prosecutorial ‘vindictiveness,’ Comey must provide evidence to the court that prosecutors were both acting with genuine animus toward the defendant, and that the defendant would not have been prosecuted but for that animus. 

This is a developing news story. Check back shortly for updates.

Federal prosecutors signaled that they might seek the removal of the lead defense attorney in James Comey’s criminal case on Sunday, citing his possible role in the disclosures Comey made in 2017, shortly after President Donald Trump fired him as FBI director in his first term.

Prosecutors cited the yearslong relationship between Comey and the defense attorney overseeing his case, Patrick Fitzgerald, as a possible conflict of interest — noting in particular whether Fitzgerald might have had any role in the disclosures Comey made during Trump’s first term. 

‘This fact raises a question of conflict and disqualification for current lead defense counsel,’ prosecutors said of Fitzgerald, Comey’s longtime friend and former colleague. The two overlapped during their time as federal prosecutors for the Southern District of New York.

Prosecutors on Sunday urged U.S. District Judge Michael Nachmanoff to expedite their request for a so-called ‘filter team’ of lawyers, which would be tasked with reviewing information in Comey’s case, including privileged materials.

Prosecutors told the court the ‘filter team’ could be crucial to help clarify the role Fitzgerald may have played in disseminating information Comey shared after leaving the FBI, including any materials that are protected by attorney-client privilege.

‘Based on publicly disclosed information, the defendant used current lead defense counsel to improperly disclose classified information,’ assistant U.S. attorneys Tyler Lemons and Gabriel Diaz said in the filing, first reported by Politico.

Lawyers for Comey swiftly opposed the push for the expedited filter team and filter protocol sought by the Justice Department, noting in a separate court filing Monday that the memos Comey sent to his lawyers were not classified at the time (a designation made after the fact).

‘In short, there is no good faith basis for attributing criminal conduct to either Mr. Comey or his lead defense counsel,’ they said of Fitzgerald, describing the claim as ‘provably false’ and an effort to defame the attorney. 

‘Similarly, there is no good faith basis to claim a ‘conflict between’ Mr. Comey and his counsel, much less a basis to move to disqualify lead defense counsel,’ they added.

Fitzgerald is one of several high-profile lawyers representing Comey in his criminal case in the Eastern District of Virginia, where the former FBI director was charged last month with one felony count of making a false statement and another felony count of obstruction. 

Prosecutors cited a 2019 report from the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General. The report excoriated Comey for sharing some information about his interactions with Trump while serving as FBI director with his lawyers, including information that was later deemed to be classified.

But it also concluded that there was no indication ‘that Comey or his attorneys released any of the classified information contained in any of the memos to members of the media.’

The office also declined to charge Comey with illegally disclosing the information.

Fitzgerald declined to respond to Fox News’s request for comment. 

Still, the motion comes as prosecutors vie for some early hits in their case against Comey, which is expected to come under new scrutiny this week. 

Comey’s team in recent days has challenged Trump’s decisions in the case, including his appointment of former White House aide Lindsey Halligan as acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. 

Halligan was installed last month to the role after interim attorney Erik Siebert resigned under pressure to indict Comey and another Trump foe, New York Attorney General Letitia James.

Comey’s lawyers previously suggested that Halligan’s appointment, made three days before a grand jury handed down his indictment, could strengthen their motion to dismiss.

It also comes hours before Comey’s lawyers will file a formal motion to dismiss the criminal case on grounds of ‘vindictive’ prosecution.

A coffin of a deceased hostage has been transferred from Hamas to Israel via the Red Cross, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said on Monday.

The body will be taken from the Gaza Strip and received in a military ceremony with a military rabbi, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement.

Hamas said the body was recovered Sunday. If confirmed as the body of a hostage, the remains of 15 hostages would still be in Gaza. A body handed over by Hamas last week was not that of a hostage, Israel said.

Israel’s Ministry of Health’s National Center of Forensic Medicine will identify the body, and then the family will be notified, Netanyahu’s office said.

‘All families of the deceased hostages have been updated about the matter, and at this difficult time, our hearts are with them,’ Netanyahu’s office said. ‘The effort to return our hostages continues continuously and will not cease until the last hostage is returned.’

‘Hamas is required to uphold the agreement and take the necessary steps to return all the hostages,’ the IDF said on X. 

The terror group last week said it needed specialized equipment and more time to recover more bodies.

Earlier on Monday, it was announced that the remains of Nepali student Bipin Joshi, who was held hostage in Gaza, were being flown from Israel to his hometown of Bhimdattanagar.

The transfer happened after the week-old ceasefire resumed after clashes between Hamas and Israel over the weekend. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

A new House GOP bill would block the United Nations (U.N.) from forcing the U.S. to take up any new tax that was not explicitly levied by American taxpayers’ own government.

It’s expected to be introduced this week, as the world awaits a U.N. vote on a global tax on carbon emissions made via international maritime shipping. 

Member states of the UN’s relevant body, the International Maritime Organization, voted late last week to postpone consideration of the global tax by a year after fierce pushback by President Donald Trump.

Pfluger’s bill would ensure that the U.S. would not be subject to that tax nor any other fiscal penalties ordered by the international organization, unless ratified by the Senate.

It would also prohibit the U.S. government from funding any global carbon tax, as well as block voluntary contributions to the U.N. by the U.S. if such a tax was levied.

The proposal for a global maritime shipping tax on carbon emissions was championed by Brazil and the European Union, among other countries that had also been advocating for more environmentally friendly international trade.

Its chief opponents were the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, the largest and second-largest oil producers in the world, respectively.

Republican Study Committee (RSC) Chair August Pfluger, R-Texas, is leading the legislation, alongside RSC Energy Task Force Chair Troy Balderson, R-Ohio, and Task Force Vice Chair Randy Weber, R-Texas.

Pfluger told Fox News Digital, ‘This fight isn’t over,’ despite the U.N. punting the vote.

‘This legislation would kill their global carbon tax scheme permanently by depriving all U.S. funding to any U.N. agency that attempts to impose a tax on the American people and ensuring Congress has a say in all taxes, fees and penalties on American citizens or companies,’ he said.

Balderson said he was ‘grateful to President Trump and Secretaries Rubio, Wright and Duffy for standing up to the United Nations and forcing the International Maritime Organization to back down.’

‘Unelected global bureaucrats at the U.N. are trying to build another slush fund, and they expect Americans to pay for it,’ Weber said. ‘A global carbon tax wasn’t on the ballot in November 2024, and the American people sure didn’t vote for a 10% hike in costs.’

The U.S. wants to fast-track outfitting Australia with nuclear submarines under the trilateral agreement between the U.S., Australia and the U.K. to beef up Australia’s submarine force aimed at countering Chinese influence in the Indo-Pacific. 

In the agreement, known as AUKUS, the U.S. will sell up to five Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines to Australia — slated for delivery as soon as 2032. Additionally, Australia and the U.K. will then coordinate to build additional attack submarines for Australia’s fleet. 

But President Donald Trump told reporters that he is eyeing a faster timeline, when asked if he was interested in speeding up the process. 

‘Well we are doing that, yeah … we have them moving very, very quickly,’ Trump told reporters Monday while meeting with Australia’s prime minister, Anthony Albanese, at the White House. 

Even so, Trump also said that he didn’t believe that AUKUS was necessary to deter China as he touted his relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping, who he is expected to meet with in South Korea later in October. 

‘I don’t think we’re going to need it,’ Trump said about the trilateral agreement. ‘I think we’ll be just fine with China. China doesn’t want to do that. First of all, the United States is the strongest military power in the world by far. It’s not even close, not even close. We have the best equipment. We have the best of everything, and nobody’s going to mess with that. And I don’t see that at all with President Xi.’

Meanwhile, the AUKUS deal hasn’t been on the most steady footing as the U.S. runs up against its own challenges with its shipbuilding capabilities. 

A slim workforce and insufficient supply chain in the U.S. shipbuilding industry could stymie the agreements, according to a Congressional Research Service report issued in March. The report also cautioned that the U.S. Navy would suffer a shortage of attack submarines for 20 years.  

Although the Navy has ordered two boats annually for the past 10 years, U.S. shipyards have only been able to produce 1.2 Virginia-class submarines annually since 2022, according to the report.  

Trump and Albanese also signed a critical minerals deal Monday during their meeting. The deal will require both countries to invest more than $3 billion throughout the next six months in critical mineral projects, according to a White House fact sheet. 

The deal also requires the Department of War to invest in a 100 metric ton-per-year advanced gallium refinery in Western Australia to support ‘self-reliance in critical minerals processing,’ according to the fact sheet. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, tore into the Democratic Party during House GOP leaders’ press conference on Day 20 of the government shutdown after anti-Trump protests swept the country over the weekend.

He blasted the left’s embrace of the ‘No Kings’ rallies, where millions of people across the U.S. took to city streets to protest President Donald Trump.

‘This is the dying breaths of a bankrupt party, in my humble opinion, all too happy to shut down the government,’ Roy said during the press conference Monday.

He and House Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris, R-Md., joined House GOP leaders’ daily shutdown press conference in a show of unity across the Republican conference.

‘No one disputes one obvious fact: It is Democrats who have chosen not to fund government. We can at least establish that truth, right? It is, in fact, the truth. And the question is, why?’ Roy said.

‘And you saw it on Saturday — it was basically for a political rally, a rally for cover for [Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.], who’s in his own political battle in New York,’ he added in reference to Republican accusations that left-wing leaders are kowtowing to Democrats’ progressive base.

He continued, ‘That’s the truth. And the irony of this is, this ‘No Kings’ rally. What are we actually talking about? I mean, it wasn’t President Trump, but Democrats who tried to make us take a shot or lose our job. It wasn’t President Trump, but Democrats who were burning our cities to the ground in 2020 and attacking police officers.’

Republican leaders spent last week hammering Democrats who planned to participate in Saturday’s ‘No Kings’ rallies, including Schumer.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., during his portion of the press conference, made a plea to Schumer to accept the GOP’s federal funding bill now that the protests were over.

‘Now that Democrats have had their protest and publicity stunts, I just pray that they come to their senses and end this shutdown and reopen the government this week. Republicans are waiting. The American people are waiting,’ Johnson said.

The House passed a bill to keep the federal government funded at current levels through Nov. 21 — called a continuing resolution (CR) — mostly along party lines last month.

It’s since failed 10 times in the Senate, with a majority of Democrats rejecting any spending deal that does not also include an extension of COVID-19 pandemic-era Obamacare subsidies that will expire at the end of this year without congressional action.

The ongoing government shutdown is now the third-longest in history.

Government shutdowns can be pretty boring.

Until a shutdown impacts you.

There’s a missed paycheck. Flight delays. You can’t visit the Smithsonian. Questions about food and drug safety.

You get the idea.

But until you reach that tipping point, most Americans are ho-hum about government shutdowns and interpret the infighting between Democrats and Republicans as de rigueur on Capitol Hill.

So they don’t pay much mind to them.

However, Democrats engineered a scheme in advance of this fall’s government shutdown. They would transmogrify the shutdown into something Americans care about: healthcare.

Democrats know that healthcare consistently polls well with voters. Democrats have known for months that many people who receive their healthcare coverage via ‘Obamacare exchanges’ would absorb a marked price spike with their premiums early next year. Moreover, notices informing people about the impending price increase would start to hit mailboxes in mid-October.

So Democrats have pleaded with Republicans to subsidize Obamacare to defray looming price increases. Obamacare subsidies and the government shutdown aren’t directly connected. But Democrats believed they could link the two. And then, after people snored off to sleep about the government shutdown on Oct. 1, they were rudely awakened by a notice in the mail that their healthcare premiums were about to jump.

Say what you will about the tactics, but it was a shrewd strategy by Democrats to seize on an issue important to their base. Moreover, it gave the party the opportunity to show voters that it’s ‘fighting’ against President Donald Trump. That’s something which didn’t happen in the March funding round. In fact, the Democrats’ lack of fighting is what set a match to an internecine fight among Democrats about how to combat the president. The public and the government are absorbing the flames of that internal conflagration now, but Democrats may have found a way to salve those wounds.

‘Fighting for healthcare is our defining issue,’ said House Minority Whip Katherine Clark, D-Mass., in an exclusive sit-down interview with Fox News. ‘Shutdowns are terrible and there will be families that are going to suffer. We take that responsibility very seriously. But it is one of the few leverage times we have.’

That’s why healthcare is the linchpin to the shutdown.

But enter Republicans. They believe Democrats own the healthcare crisis. They passed Obamacare in the first place. It was a Democratic Congress under President Joe Biden that boosted the subsidy to defray the cost of Obamacare in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the touchstone of the Democrats’ legislative agenda.

‘It is the Democrats who created that subsidy who put the expiration date on it. They did it all on their own,’ said House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La.

Some Republicans have even reverted to their 2010 mantra to ‘repeal and replace’ Obamacare.

That said, Johnson tried to beat back those calls from conservatives.

‘There’s no way to repeal and replace it because it’s too deeply ingrained right now. We have to improve it,’ said Johnson.

Such a declaration would have been unthinkable a few years ago. Here we have a Republican Speaker of the House arguing that Congress must sustain — even assist — Obamacare.

‘Obamacare has been a failure,’ said Rep. Marlin Stutzman, R-Ind., on Fox News. ‘We’ve been enduring this now for almost 15 years.’

Stutzman benefited from the GOP’s plan to ditch Obamacare in 2010. It was an historic, 63-seat midterm election pickup for Republicans. Voters sent Stutzman to Washington for the first time in that midterm.

The Indiana Republican added that he’s ‘not sure that subsidies are the answer in the long run.’

‘Every couple of years they need more and more subsidies to be able to prop [Obamacare] up because it’s not affordable,’ said Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., on Fox Business Network.

Democrats are demanding Obamacare subsidies before they agree to a Republican plan to fund the government.

‘It is an inflection point in this budget process where we have tried to get the Republicans to meet with us and prioritize the American people,’ said Clark.

But Democrats believe the need to boost Obamacare reveals flaws in the law.

‘Isn’t that an indictment that there’s a problem with [Obamacare]?’ I asked House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y. ‘The fact that it needs to be propped up in some form?’

‘No,’ replied Jeffries. ‘The overwhelming majority of the American people, including in the Republican-run states, support an extension of the [Obamacare] tax credits.’

Some Republicans reject extending the subsidies.

‘I’m not going to vote to extend these subsidies.They’re through the roof expensive,’ said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.

But other conservatives insist that Obamacare needs rescuing.

‘If you’re on [Obamacare] your premium is going to literally double. If you have your own private health insurance policy, your premium is going to go up and people already can’t afford their premiums,’ said Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga. ‘People back at home are going, ‘Wait a minute, my premium is going to skyrocket.’’

Greene is one of the most outspoken members of her party when it comes to concerns about the premium increases. In fact, she believes that Republicans allowed ‘Democrats to hold the moral high ground on it, because they’re talking about it.’

Greene and Johnson spoke about her concerns several days ago.

But Obamacare vexed the GOP for years.

Former House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and others led an effort to repeal and replace Obamacare. House Republicans voted dozens of times to wipe out Obamacare in 2011 and 2012. They couldn’t push such a package through the Senate, but it made for a powerful GOP talking point. Former House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., got a little closer. Republicans had the Senate in 2016. So the House and Senate both voted for the first time to repeal and replace Obamacare, but President Barack Obama vetoed it.

Republicans finally had the trifecta of the House, Senate and White House in 2017 after Trump won the election. The House initially stumbled, having to yank the repeal and replace package off the floor in the spring of 2017. But the House regrouped and finally engineered a strategy that passed. But the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., single-handedly tanked the bill when he famously voted against the package in a dramatic roll call vote in the summer of 2017.

‘I still have PTSD from the experience,’ said Johnson of the GOP efforts.

Trump even offered a familiar, if well-traveled promise, during last year’s campaign.

‘I have concepts of a plan,’ the president said at the ABC presidential debate last fall. ‘You’ll be hearing about it in the not too distant future.’

So while a resolution to the government shutdown remains elusive, so do the positions about one of the most controversial pieces of legislation in the past 50 years.

Republicans have tried to flip the script on the Democrats — now highlighting the problems with Obamacare. The GOP hopes that rekindles a familiar antipathy the right has for Obamacare and helps them during the shutdown.

‘Obamacare is a failed product in the first place. And they used that as an excuse in order to add additional federal dollars,’ said Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D.

The sides just don’t see eye-to-eye.

‘When [Obamacare] was passed, healthcare was a lot less costly than it is now, and insurance rates were a lot lower. So these healthcare tax credits are necessary for healthcare inflation to make it affordable for people,’ said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.

Obamacare and the shutdown are now inextricably linked. And if dealing with that wasn’t complicated enough, the infusion of Obamacare into the debate makes the legislative morass seemingly intractable.

House Republicans’ campaign arm is announcing it brought in nearly $24 million in the months of July through September this year.

More than half of that — roughly $13.95 million — came in September, as Republicans were readying for a political messaging war over federal funding.

That fight is still ongoing now, more than halfway through October. The government has been shut down for 20 days as Republicans and Democrats are still in disagreement over federal spending.

The National Republican Congressional Committee’s (NRCC) $13.95 million haul represents its best September in a non-election year and a 50% increase from the previous comparable September in 2023.

The NRCC is ending the third quarter with nearly $46 million cash on hand and nearly $93 million raised in 2025 alone.

In a statement sent to Fox News Digital, NRCC Chair Rep. Richard Hudson, R-N.C., pointed out that House Republicans already voted to keep the federal government funded last month and touted the GOP base propelling his group ahead of the 2026 elections.

‘House Republicans are firing on all cylinders. Our majority funded the federal government, and we’re delivering for working families and building unstoppable momentum heading into 2026,’ Hudson said.

‘With President Trump leading the charge and voters rallying behind our conservative agenda, we’re raising record-breaking resources to hold the House and grow our majority,’ he said.

Republicans are battling to keep the House in next year’s midterm elections, which have historically been unfavorable to the party in power. The GOP has held the House majority since 2023.

But GOP leaders have expressed confidence in their agenda and in the White House, while arguing the Democratic Party is facing a lack of cohesion and disapproval of its policies by American voters.

The NRCC outpaced its counterpart, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) in the previous quarter of 2025, raising $32.3 million compared to the DCCC’s $29.1 million.

The DCCC ended the year with more cash on hand, however, with $39.7 million compared to the NRCC’s $37.6 million.

Both groups and their allies have spent much of October battling over the government shutdown in the court of public opinion.

Republicans are accusing Democrats of holding the federal government hostage by refusing to vote for their funding bill unless partisan healthcare demands are met.

Democrats, meanwhile, have argued that Republicans are risking the healthcare costs of millions of Americans by not including an extension of COVID-19 pandemic-era Obamacare subsidies that are set to expire this year without congressional action.

The House passed a seven-week federal funding bill largely along party lines on Sept. 19. It has been stalled in the Senate, however, where at least several Democrats are needed to hit the chamber’s 60-vote threshold to break the filibuster.